LexisNexis has published a report on what it describes as the mentorship gap created by the increasing use of AI in legal work. Drawing on a January 2026 survey of 873 UK-based legal professionals, the report identifies clear productivity gains from legal AI, while also raising concerns about how junior lawyers develop judgment, argumentation and verification skills when routine research, drafting and summarising tasks are increasingly automated.
The survey found that 65 per cent of lawyers using paid legal AI platforms said they were producing work faster, while more than half of lawyers using AI tools of any kind said the same. The learning risks identified were substantial with 72% of respondents expressing concern that junior lawyers using AI would struggle to develop legal reasoning and argumentation, and 69% were worried about verification and source-checking skills. Only 2% said AI mainly strengthens learning.
The report suggests that AI (while not a threat to training) is changing the nature of early career development, with junior lawyers potentially being exposed to more complex work earlier, but with less opportunity to build foundational skills through slower, hands-on legal tasks. The report’s proposed response is to train new lawyers to use AI as a thinking partner rather than a shortcut, embedding challenge, verification and critical reasoning into AI-enabled workflows.
As AI becomes more embedded in legal practice, training models may need to place greater emphasis on supervision, source-checking, judgment and the ability to assess whether AI-generated output is accurate, appropriate and aligned with client needs.